The EU Hydrogen Strategy will give a boost to clean hydrogen production in Europe. Hydrogen can be used as a feedstock, a fuel or an energy carrier and storage, and has many possible applications which would reduce greenhouse gas emissions across industry, transport, power and buildings sectors. The Commission’s economic recovery plan ‘Next Generation EU’ highlights hydrogen as an investment priority to boost economic growth and resilience, create local jobs and consolidate the EU’s global leadership.

The priority is to develop clean, renewable hydrogen, produced using mainly wind and solar energy as the most compatible option with the EU’s climate neutrality goal in the long term. However, in the short and medium term other forms of low-carbon hydrogen are needed to rapidly reduce emissions from existing hydrogen production and support the development of a viable market at a significant scale.

To target support at the cleanest available technologies, the Commission will work to introduce a comprehensive terminology and certification, to define renewable and other forms of hydrogen. It will be based on life-cycle carbon emissions, anchored in existing climate and energy legislation, and in line with the EU taxonomy for sustainable investments.

The path towards a European hydrogen eco-system step by step:

• From now to 2024, EU will support the installation of at least 6GW of renewable hydrogen electrolysers, and the production of up to 1 million tonnes of renewable hydrogen.

• From 2025 to 2030, hydrogen needs to become an intrinsic part of our integrated energy system, with at least 40GW of renewable hydrogen electrolysers and the production of up to 10 million tonnes of renewable hydrogen in the EU.

• From 2030 onwards, renewable hydrogen will be deployed at a large scale across all hard-to-decarbonise sectors.

The EU framework programmes have supported research and innovation (R&I) on clean hydrogen for many years, mainly through the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen public-private partnership. The research and innovation programmes received around €985 million of EU funding for over 250 projects. Projects have played a key role in developing hydrogen-powered vehicles, training tools for efficient and safe hydrogen handling, land low-cost electrolysers for optimised grid management.   

The Horizon Europe (2021–2027) programme should see the launch of a new public-private partnership on Clean Hydrogen with an increased budget. This new partnership will support joint R&I activities with industry on supply, storage, transport and transformation of clean hydrogen for the whole economy. It will aim at establishing hydrogen’s competitiveness and viability as an energy source in place of fossil fuels.

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